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JOY AND POWER

Three messages with One meaning

by

Henry van Dyke

1903

Dedicated to my friend John Huston Finley
President of the College of the City of New York

THE PREFACE

The three messages which are brought together in this book were given
not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in
space. The one called Joy and Power was delivered in Los Angeles,
California, at the opening of the Presbyterian General Assembly, May 21,
1903. The one called The Battle of Life was delivered on Baccalaureate
Sunday at Princeton University, June 7. The one called The Good Old Way
was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Harvard University, June 14. At
the time, I was thinking chiefly of the different qualities and needs of
the people to whom I had to speak. This will account for some things in
the form of each message. But now that they are put together I can see
that all three of them say about the same thing. They point in the same
direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal to the same
motive. It is nothing new, the meaning of this threefold message, but
it is the best that I have learned in life. And I believe it is
true, so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance.

Henry van Dyke

Avalon, July 5, 1903

CONTENTS

i. Joy and Power

ii. The Battle of Life

iii. The Good Old Way

JOY AND POWER

St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are
ye if ye do them.

I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in
its relation to happiness.

This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which
Jesus stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the
lines of power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and
steadily is not to disregard other truths. The mariner takes the whole
heavens of astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single
star.

In the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their
explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly
different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true
star, or a will o' the wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what
are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These
are the two questions with which I would come to Christ, seeking
instruction and guidance.

I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. It
is the law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the
perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in
form and function, and a true harmony with its environment. Every drop
of sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood
in the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this
movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious
form is happiness, the satisfaction of the vital impulse, the rhythm
of the inward life, the melody of a heart that has found its keynote.
To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are
human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of
their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful welfare of the
soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. Holiness is wholeness. In
striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the wish for
happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort.

Now what does Christ say in regard to this natural human wish? Does He
say that it is an illusion? Does He condemn and deny it? Would He have
accepted Goethe's definition: "religion is renunciation"?

Surely such a notion is far from the spirit of Jesus. There is nothing
of the hardness of Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's
gospel. It is humane, sympathetic, consoling. Unrest and weariness, the
fever of passion and the chill of despair, soul solitude and
heart trouble, are the very things that He comes to cure. He begins His
great discourse with a series of beatitudes. "Blessed" is the word... Continue reading book >>